


Nail Polish Remover

by JHSC



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Family Issues, Found Family, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Genderqueer Maria Hill, Homophobia, Transvengers Initiative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:52:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Maria was sixteen, Nick Fury swooped down like a tall, terrifying fairy godmother and whisked her out of her mother’s house and away to SHIELD Academy. Once she was settled in, the very first thing she did was cut off her hair. It was long, shiny, and strong. Her mother had always told her it was her one saving grace. Her face was too sharp, her shoulders too wide, her attitude too brusque and her posture too arrogant, but her hair was just right if she would only put some effort into taking care of it.</p>
<p>Her first day at Ops, before she’d even unpacked her suitcase, Maria spent $15 for a pixie cut and threw 21 inches of “just right” into the bin. With short hair, the sharp lines of her face were even more prominent, and there was no hiding the definition she was gaining in her neck and shoulders.</p>
<p>For the first time in her life, Maria liked how she looked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nail Polish Remover

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about Maria Hill, her relatives, and her family. ~~It takes place in the as-yet-unpublished, definitely-not-named Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny. You do not need to read said fic (currently halfway done and hiding on my hard drive) in order to understand anything that goes on here.~~
> 
> **Update:** So this was _supposed_ to take place in the Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny 'verse, but then Landslide was finally finished and the timelines ended up really not working out (not even enough to fudge, sadly). So this is now officially a stand-alone piece. That said, keep an eye on the UKOUD for another Maria-centric fic centered around friendship, terrible parents, and choosing your own path.
> 
> Many thanks to [shadowen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen/pseuds/shadowen) for being a super awesome beta and a perfect human being.

When Maria was sixteen, Nick Fury swooped down like a tall, terrifying fairy godmother and whisked her out of her mother’s house and away to SHIELD Academy. Once she was settled in, the very first thing she did was cut off her hair. It was long, shiny, and strong. Her mother had always told her it was her one saving grace. Her face was too sharp, her shoulders too wide, her attitude too brusque and her posture too arrogant, but her hair was just right if she would only put some effort into taking care of it.

Her first day at Ops, before she’d even unpacked her suitcase, Maria spent $15 for a pixie cut and threw 21 inches of “just right” into the bin. With short hair, the sharp lines of her face were even more prominent, and there was no hiding the definition she was gaining in her neck and shoulders.

For the first time in her life, Maria liked how she looked.

That December, when she went home on break, her mother saw her hair and burst into tears. Maria went back to the academy after three days and spent Christmas Day perfecting her backspring and trying to remember all the confidence she’d found over the past few months.

The next year, she still had the pixie cut, and her shoulders had grown even broader, due to the amount of time she spent punching things. Her mother wouldn’t speak to her, and her father sat her down and told her that this was only a phase, that she could experiment and get it out of her system. When she was done, they would forgive her, and then they could all move on.

Maria sat there with a stunned expression and asked, “What is it you think I’m doing?”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” he said darkly.

She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “No, Dad, I really don’t.”

“You’re breaking your mother’s heart,” was all he would say, and then he got up from the kitchen table and went out the connecting door to the garage. The sounds coming through the wall indicated that, at 11:30 at night, he had decided to rearrange his tools. She went to bed and left him to it.

The third time she went home for Christmas, her mother was back to speaking to her, but only in short, terse exchanges. Her father was much the same. Maria sat through it, concentrating on not caring. She wore a button-up blouse and tailored slacks to Mass in the morning, despite her mother’s huff and subsequent scowl.

The phone rang at two o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas Day. Her mother’s hand snaked out to grab it before Maria could react. She answered, paused for a moment, then said, “I told you yesterday not to call here!”

If it was a regular phone, she would have slammed it back onto the receiver; as it was cordless, she could only hit the end call button. Her mother placed so much weight on politeness and propriety that to see her shout at someone on the phone and hang up on them was deeply unsettling.

“What was that?” Maria asked, shocked.

“Never you mind,” her mother snapped.

The phone rang two more times that afternoon, and each time, Maria’s mother would answer, pause, and say something along the lines of, “Never call back!”

At five, there was a knock at the door, and her mother went into the foyer to answer it. Hearing her startled gasp, Maria was over the back of the couch, grabbing her sidearm from where she’d stashed it behind the TV, and swinging around the hallway door to face—Natasha Romanov.

Maria dropped her arms and flicked the safety on. “Romanov. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I called to check up on you, and the person on the phone was _very_ hostile,” Natasha said, in that special tone of voice that meant she was about to punish someone with politeness. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m fine,” Maria said flatly.

“May I come in?” Natasha asked with a smile.

“No, you may not,” Maria’s mother said, stepping forward again. “Maria, I have tried to be understanding, I have tried to be patient, but I cannot have you inviting your little girlfriend into this house!”

Maria turned sharply to look at her mother. “My what?”

“Don’t give me that look, I know what you have been up to away at that school! I am not happy with the choices you have been making, Maria, and I am not putting up with it anymore!”

Maria’s jaw dropped. She glanced over at Natasha, who was looking amused, which meant she almost certainly wasn’t. She looked back over at her mother. “Natasha’s not my girlfriend.”

Her mother scoffed.

“Mom, I’m not gay.”

“Come on, Maria. The pants? The hair? All this… masculine… and if you think I don’t know you’ve been taking hormones – you’re a girl, Maria! Nothing is going to change that!”

Maria’s spine stiffened. “Is this why you’ve been acting so weird since I left for the Academy?”

She turned to look at her father, standing in the doorway of the foyer. “Is this what you think has been going on? This is why you won’t talk to me?”

“Don’t think you can talk your way out of this, Maria, I know my daughter, and I know when she’s being evasive. I know what you’ve been up to—”

“I’m not gay, Mom,” Maria sighed. “But you’re definitely an asshole.”

“Is that your official parting shot?” Clint Barton asked, coming down the stairwell, her packed suitcase in his hand. “Because if it is, then let’s get going, Christmas dinner ain’t gonna eat itself.”

While her parents stared at Clint in shock, Maria grabbed her coat from the hall closet and slipped on her boots. As she turned toward the open door, her mother said, “Maria!”

Maria bent down, brushed her mother’s cheek with a kiss and said, “Merry Christmas, Mom. I’ll see you next year.”

Once they were situated in Clint’s car and backing out of the driveway, Natasha said, “Next year, just come straight home with us and skip all the family drama.”

“If I wanted to skip the family drama, I would not be eating Christmas dinner with you and your three father figures. _Three,_ Natasha.”

“Hey!” Clint said, turning to glare at her. Natasha grabbed the wheel to steer for him as he said, “I am NOT a father figure. I am an older-brother figure. A cool older-brother figure.”

“Oh god,” Maria groaned, leaning back into the backseat. “He thinks he’s the cool dad.”

Natasha said, “Nick is definitely the cool dad.”

Clint turned back around to retake control of the car and huffed, “I hate you both. I’m disowning both of you. My arrowhead collection is hereby bequeathed to my friend Aaron, who never gave me any shit about anything other than my personality, intelligence, and personal hygiene.”

“Thanks, by the way,” Maria said, after a moment.

*

It was night before they made it back to the house where Natasha and her makeshift family spent the holidays. Clint tossed Maria’s suitcase into Natasha’s room, then led the way down the hall to the master bedroom. He pointed at dresser drawers and closet shelves in turn, listing, “T-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, sweatpants, socks, shoes. Is that nail polish? Oh god, it’s nail polish. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

He rushed out of the room, and Maria could hear him shouting to Natasha for nail polish remover, Natasha yelling something back, Nick yelling something else. Maria ignored it all as she pulled the button-down shirt off over her head, and dispensed with the tailored slacks. She considered the underwire bra for a moment, then unhooked it at the back and pulled it off, as well.

She surveyed the drawer of t-shirts. Clint’s tended to be ripped, stained, or otherwise damaged in some way. Phil’s were in good condition, but tended to pull tight across her shoulders. She ultimately grabbed one of Clint’s less-destroyed shirts, then pulled on a baggy pair of sweats, then switched them out for a pair of Phil’s jeans, as Clint’s were just a bit too long in the leg and narrow in the hip. Phil, when he wore them, preferred his jeans a little looser.

She was just pulling on Phil’s Red Sox sweatshirt when the man himself knocked on the door and let himself in, carrying a small bottle of acetone and a handful of cotton balls.

“I heard you had a tough day,” he said, handing over the goods.

“I’m going to make your bedroom stink,” Maria protested.

He shrugged. “It’ll air out.”

Maria sat on the corner of the bed and went about removing the polish from her nails. She didn’t know why she’d even tried wearing it. She’d thought she was making the right kind of effort. And nail polish didn’t make her feel physically uncomfortable the way the clothes and the hair did. But maybe, she supposed, it wasn’t the right kind of effort.

“I’m not gay,” she said to her nails.

She felt Phil sit down on the other side of the bed. “I know.”

“So why am I getting treated like I am?” She looked over at Phil, then ducked back down over her nails. “It’s because I look like what people think a lesbian looks like, right? I look wrong for a woman.”

She scrubbed harder at a stubborn spot on her nail. “Hate makeup. Hate long hair. Hate being nice and polite and cute and pretending I’m stupid and pretending I’m something I’m not just so people will give me the time of day.”

Phil’s hand covered her own, stopping her rubbing where the cuticle had already turned red. She looked up at him. “Is this what it’s going to be like, my whole life? Am I going to have to dress up in a girl costume every day? Wear a mask just to get by? Never get to take it off, even if it kills me?”

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close. She sniffled into the side of his neck. “I’m gonna get snot on your collar,” she protested.

“I live with Clint Barton,” he replied. “You think snot is the worst thing this sweater has ever seen?”

She huffed a laugh.

“I don’t know what to tell you to make it all better,” Phil said. “I know this kind of thing is different for women, and I can’t really speak to that.”

“I do know,” he continued after a bit, “that SHIELD is a good place to be when you don’t particularly conform to others’ expectations, as opposed to maybe the private sector. People won’t care as much what you look like, so long as you’re defending their backs.

“Most importantly, though, you’ve got a good group of friends. I’m pretty sure Nick may have legally adopted you while your back was turned. You’re one of the few people Clint can relax around, because never has to worry if he’s reading you right, because you’ll just tell him. And Natasha knows one or two things about masks. No one here is going to judge you for what’s underneath yours.”

He rubbed his hand up and down her back soothingly, as she sniffed back a wave of tears.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah. What do you think of me?”

“I think you’re going to be flying up the SHIELD hierarchy even faster than I did, and I’m looking forward to you busting my balls the entire time.”

Maria snorted, then sat up and wiped her face on her sleeve. “You said balls.”

“Please don’t tell Clint, he’ll be upset he missed it. You ready for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Phil!” Clint called through the closed door. “Ask Maria if she wants some hot buttered rum with extra rum!”

Phil stood, shaking his head. “He thinks he’s the cool dad.”

“You’re definitely the cool dad,” she replied.

He waved her through the door. “Merry Christmas, Maria.”

“You, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> BTW, I'm on [tumblr!](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com)


End file.
